1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to an automated tool for a search and, more particularly, to providing search options including submitting a search to human guide(s) and/or searching without assistance of human guide(s).
2. Description of the Related Art
An Internet search engine available from Google®, Yahoo®, etc., may be utilized to conduct a search and sometimes desired information is obtained from results returned by the search engine. Such search engines provide a user with a list of search results, forcing the user to look through the list of results to obtain needed information. Further, a user may be required to repeat a search using a different search engine or another resource to retrieve relevant results. While some search engines and other resources available over the Internet provide better results for searches conducted in relation to a specific subject matter, a user must generally have experience in conducting searches to determine which resource(s) produce relevant information for a given subject matter.
Meta search engines such as Jux2™, Dogpile®, etc., submit a query to multiple search engines and return results from the search engines; however, search engines, Internet directories such as LookSmart® and other similar information resources provide comprehensive listings of web pages believed to be relevant to providing an answer to a query submitted by a user and require the user to conduct additional searching to locate desired information.
Attempts have been made to have humans answer users' questions via a variety of mechanisms including via e-mail, information posted at websites, and via library reference desks that are connected to users via “chat” sessions. However, there are many limitations imposed by these and other offerings including having limited pools of “experts”, having latency in delivering results, having helpers who are not sufficiently knowledgeable or targeted provide optimal results, etc. In addition, these offerings do not identify search resources without the question being submitted to a human and do not address situations where a user may not want to submit the question to be answered by a human, for example, due to privacy concerns, difficulty phrasing a query or question, desire to see immediate results and/or learn about a subject instead of being simply provided with an answer, or for any other reason for searching for information oneself.
Although various types of search engines and other resources are available for locating information via the Internet, there is a need for a search tool enabling optional use of human search guide(s) and/or resource(s) selected by the human search guide(s) to increase probability of obtaining relevant results.